Heavy Rain Preview

Sony reveals the second character and a nightclub scene.

You're reading an E3 2009 preview, which we've broken into three sections to make it easy to sift through during this week of convention madness. Check out E3.1UP.COM for all (meaning words, screens, and videos) of our E3 2009 coverage.

What's the game about? It's what Indigo Prophecy 2 would be if the series followed Final Fantasy rules. In other words, it's not really a sequel; it just acts like one, with a similar (but significantly evolved) interface designed to tell an interactive story filled with lots of button-pressing minigames. The idea is to make player choices and the tension of performing sometimes very simple actions interesting in the context of an overall story, without racing, fighting, or shooting mechanics that you would normally find in games classified as "thrillers."

Click the image above to check out all Heavy Rain screens.

What's new for E3? In one of Sony's meeting rooms, Quantic Dream's David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumiere presented a new scene called "Madison at the Blue Lagoon," which included the first official look at the second playable character in the game: Madison Paige. (Cage also said that the third character would be revealed at Games Convention, and the fourth at this year's Tokyo Game Show.) She's a photographer/journalist who has insomnia and can only sleep if she's in a hotel room, so she books rooms for a couple days at a time. You may recognize her character model from the Taxidermist presentation the developers gave about a year ago.

The scene starts with Paige entering a nightclub looking for owner Paco Mendes, who she suspects has information leading to the Origami Killer, so she asks the bartender and tracks him down, but his security won't let her near him. So, naturally, she tries to dance on a platform -- complete with a button-pressing minigame -- to attract his attention. That doesn't work, so she heads to the bathroom to make herself more presentable for the task by putting makeup on, unbuttoning a button or two on her shirt, and -- with a few tugs on the Sixaxis motion sensors -- ripping her skirt to make it shorter.

Click the image above to check out all Heavy Rain screens.

That works, so the two talk and Paige takes Mendes upstairs hoping to pull a gun on him, but he tosses her purse (containing the gun) aside so she has to strip to get his attention, eventually leading to her doing a dance -- by shaking the Sixaxis controller -- then grabbing a lamp and knocking him out with it. She ties him to a chair, and when he wakes up, slaps him a few times -- again with Sixaxis movements -- before grabbing his groin to force him to talk. Success!

What's our take? I love the game's overall concept, and this new scene does a great job of showing some of the variety. Parts of the nightclub scenario are a bit over the top for my tastes, but it's still a scene I can't wait to try for myself.